Everything I Cannot Lose
by PlatinumRosewood
Summary: Freddie's shed never happened. Life hit like a wrecking ball and left everyone with some scars, but 10 years have passed and now a serial killer has surfaced, targeting some of their own. Time is running out and they must put their past behind them...or die trying. Extremely AU, based off of Studying Naomi.


**A/N:** Surprise! So I never ever post back to back updates but seeing as this is new, I suppose it doesn't really count. I'll keep it short though!

Back in late winter I read this short one-shot by **xMotherfuckerJones** and while the idea is entirely AU, it seemed so fascinating to write. So a few PMs of hounding the genius to keep going I even offered to base a story off it. To my COMPLETE JOY, I got the okay-go-for-it and did exactly like that. I couldn't help myself really. This is following the path of Burning Roses, in that I'm really trying not to update until WWF is done, but I just wanted to throw the start out there. I'm really fucking excited and hope you guys are too! Enjoy and tell me what you think(:

Disclaimer: _Characters belong to Skins and prompt idea belongs to xMotherfuckerJones_

Everything I Cannot Lose - Ch. 1

Effy

-Prologue-

It's been years since I've been out in the city. All this traffic and noise, it's stifling. A wonder that I didn't even notice it in my youth. I try to think back to the fags and mints I lived on, years of it, and feel my stomach protest already. It's early, not yet eight in the morning, and the sun's just peaking over most of the buildings. The roads are light with travelers, but still chaos in my ears. I pop in some gum to try and soothe the grinding of my teeth. It's been happening a while lately, when nerves kick in. A reaction ever since getting treatment, but I suppose it's better than the other option. Lying dead in my blood. I take another piece for good measure.

After Freddie died, another door opened up. I had thought that I was already closed off, expertly shutting out the others, but then grief hit like a train, and I realized I had barely been shut up at all. Just comfortably numb. Not after that happened. I reached a point where death seemed like a glamour. The fashion of going out with a bang and the adoring fans that wail for you. Style was everything.

Until it wasn't. Until life got in the way. They came for Cook, the coppers, and locked him up for years. Apparently he had been alright and was posted bail six years ago. Some freedom. Two months later he was found died, blunt impact from a bat to the head, the same way as Freddie. I didn't even have enough grief to give him, wasted on my own self-pity and the ever present longing for Freddie. I lost it, every ounce of sanity. My parents had long since split and mum was drowning herself in an opium haze. Panda had written to me from America saying she met Thomas there again and decided to give things another go. Foolish is what I would call it.

So I went to live with Campbell. Her own mum was drowning in middle-aged cock on Indian beaches and Naomi hadn't heard a word since college. She had shut off too, not feeling anymore, especially not since the Fitches moved out into their caravan. Since Emily had gone. They were such idiots to let things go, but after a while Naomi just stopped listening. The day Emily left, she took a part of that girl with her. I hadn't seen her smile since. One numb and one depressed girl living under one miserable roof with heaps of grief was a ticking time bomb and I barely had some sanity left to recognize it. So I had myself committed. Didn't even leave the premises for five and half years.

They gave me drugs, lots of them, and treatment, and a better doctor, a woman. She was personally assigned after the Foster incident. She was sweet and she listened and things barely started to get better. If not better, then they hurt less. But it was slow progress. I finally reached a point where I could manage being on my own, living with just myself, and they let me go to fend on my own in the cruel world. I came in three times a week for check ups but other than that, I was back in my numb comfort once more.

I guess I've come full circle.

What changed was when I started seeing the news a few months ago, grisly murders that should have been obscene to show on the telly, but it fascinated me. Week after week, another report, another story, another tragic accident that wasn't an accident at all. Of course not. Until I saw something on one of the bodies. So I checked it out, going back to day old newspapers.

It was there in the previous victim. And the one before that. And the one before that. So then I looked them up, trying to find a relation. They had all been killed in different manners, no two exactly the same, but always leaving the same mark. At last I found a faint connection and clung to it. Researching. Waiting.

And then it hit me.

That was this morning at four. It had become an obsession trying to become some wannabe detective but all of a sudden things got much more personal. I had left at seven and been walking ever since I found the address. Still in Bristol, I smiled. It was a chilly morning as I padded the side pavement and I tucked my hands into my pocket, the cool mint gum not helping me in the slightest.

But I hope _she_ will. She is the last hope we have.


End file.
